


Fine Young Cannibals

by Mitsuhachi



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Cannibalism, Community: spook_me, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:10:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuhachi/pseuds/Mitsuhachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the bitty ex-members of the Embryon are probably never allowed to go trick-or-treating again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine Young Cannibals

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for this year's spook_me challenge. I signed up for Digital Devil Saga, with the prompts "Cannibals" and also [this sfw b-movie cover image. ](http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab353/spook_me/Spook%20Me%20Science%20Fiction%20Covers/SpookMe37-1.jpg)
> 
> Warnings for fairly explicit violence, more-explicit-than-canon cannibalism, and possibly some incest-y vibes if you find the pairings you'd expect happening as they're being raised together as children.
> 
> There are some mild spoilers for the first game, and the first cutscene of the second game. If you've seen them walking with Fred, you should be fine. I suspect you could read this without much knowledge of canon as well, but YMMV.

Fred was almost ready to put his head down and cry.

“So wait,” Gale insisted for the third or fourth time, frowning seriously at Fred from across the kitchen table like he thought that this was some kind of trick. “You WANT us to put on disguises, deliberately run around the city at night—which is your own rule about our not being supposed to do in the first place—and then extort bribes from the neighbors via threats of undefined personal or property damage? I’m sorry—I don’t really get it.”

“’s cause it’s crap,” Heat muttered, pushing his not-quite-blackened-yet bread back down into the toaster, and waved off Sera’s gasped ‘Heat!’ and Serph’s quelling look without actually even looking up.

“It totally is crap,” Argilla agreed over her orange juice. “Katy from school is going to dress up as a princess—her older brother’s in theater and he’s going to make her costume himself. Isn’t that stupid? No one’s going to believe blackmail from a princess.”

“I’m gwon go as a doctor! EVERYONE’s scared of doctors,” Cielo said, and was already working his pout when both Fred and Angel immediately vetoed this plan.

“Doctors are _too_ scary,” was Angel’s objection, and no one seemed to want to disagree with her. Still, at least the argument about costumes seemed to have gotten them to accept the basic plan of trick-or-treating, for the moment anyway, and Fred was realistic enough to count that as a win.

But then Gale carefully set his glass of milk back down on the table. “Ok, but—no, wait,” he started again, and Fred had to tell them he thought he could hear the school bus coming because if he didn’t he really was going to cry, and he’d promised himself he’d never hit the Jack while there were people depending on him. Even if sometimes he REALLY REALLY WANTED TO.

********

Serph and Sera were putting their heads together in the back of class, whispering in that way that always made something tight and twisty coil up in Heat’s chest. For about half a minute, he thought seriously about telling the teacher on them, except that that would have made Sera be sad and maybe she would have cried and Serph would have just looked hurt and a little confused and let Sera cry on him and—well, generally, it’d just have made things suck more. So forget it.

He DID kick Serph’s chair when the teacher called for recess, but honestly, they both kind of expected that from each other at this point, and he didn’t think Serph really minded. It’s not like they could stand around hugging all day like Sera and Argilla (and for some reason Cielo, though none of the rest of them could understand why he got away with this) did. “You guys were talking all through class,” he challenged, and for a minute Serph almost looked uncomfortable.

Sera was grinning, though. “We’re going trick-or-treating as mermaids!”

Heat had clearly been wrong; today was actually the best day ever. “MERMAIDS,” he repeated gleefully. The image in his head was of Sera in some cute long shimmery skirt, looking so, so pretty, and Serph in the same looking…well. Looking, um. You know. Heat took a minute and gave that thought some stern thinking about. Looking like a nerd, was clearly what he meant, because boys are not supposed to wear skirts, even if they would be kind of… well. But somehow in all of this arguing with himself, Heat realized that Serph had kind of stopped looking uncomfortable and had actually relaxed past his normal icy calm into something that could aaaaaalmost be called smug, and Heat kind of wanted to punch him in the face. So he did.

In the end, the teacher got called anyway and the bruise at the corner of his mouth actually did kind of hurt, but he and Serph had an understanding and so Heat didn’t actually mind.

**********

“Pii-ay-roh.” Jinana said each syllable very clearly because the word didn’t have any of the letters it should have if they wanted you to say it that way. The picture in her book looked something like a clown, and something like a ballerina, and Argilla already couldn’t wait to see Jinana’s costume because it was every bit as graceful and awesome as Jinana was, and also somehow sad. The thought of Jinana in a costume like that made this Halloween thing sound a lot less like crap than Katy and her princess dress. For the first time, Argilla allowed that yeah, maybe she would dress up.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little shy when she asked Jinana if she could see the other pictures in the book. Jinana gave her a long, slow look that made Argilla think of Serph and then nodded without saying anything, moving over to make room on the little playroom couch. It might have been awkward, a little uncomfortable, but the steady warmth of Jinana’s hand resting at the small of her back made Argilla feel sure that she was just where she ought to be.

There were a lot of pictures of people dancing in Jinana’s book: people dressed as fairies and swans, Egyptian princes and ghosts, and a few kids their age that Argilla _thought_ were supposed to be some kind of candy. She flipped through the pages without much interest until she caught sight of the one where the woman’s arms were flung out like whips lashing around her body, power and fury in every line of her. Where the other dancers all looked delicate, somehow, always determinedly ‘pretty’ before anything else, this dancer looked like a storm, like an earthquake, with the dust-and-flowing-water of her dress and the leaves in her hair. “Gaia,” the caption read, and Argilla mouthed it silently to herself like a secret she couldn’t quite remember.

“I can help you make that costume, if you want,” Jinana offered unprompted, and Argilla could only nod.

*****

Cielo decided, in turn, that he was going to be a power ranger, a policeman, an alien, a ninja, a vampire, a pumpkin, and the Shark. He was really pleased with himself about the Shark—it was pretty much guaranteed to be the scariest thing out there if doctors were off the table—but then he realized that he probably wouldn’t actually be allowed to go to school in a costume that had one hundred and twenty real razorblade teeth. Which was pretty fail, when you really thought about it, but what could you expect from adults? No priorities.

Still he was…not exactly ‘sulking’ anymore, when he had the best idea ever, so much as ‘laying in the grass with his head in Sera’s lap so she could poke little flowers into the beads in his hair while they both watched clouds’. “Dat one is definitely a fishing pole,” he informed Sera, because it totally was: a loooooong stretch of perfectly straight narrow cloud that bent at a sharp angle at one end towards a much bigger, fluffier cloud.

“I think that one’s a plane,” Sera objected, but mildly, because she wasn’t really paying a lot of attention and they both knew it. Serph and Heat had gone all the way over the hill and were now trying to pull each other’s hair while they fell down it. Still, planes were pretty cool—fighter jets could pull off some pretty sweet moves up there, and even if they were in the army, fighter pilots had all the power they needed to protect their comrades, no matter what. Which was, of course, when Cielo started to grin. “Dat’s it!”

Sera made a somewhat distracted, questioning noise as Heat and Serph hit the ground at the bottom of the hill with an audible thump. “What is?”

“Dat’s only the best idea ever! I’ve definitely decided this time: I’m gonna go as a fighter pilot! Dat’ll be so neat!” He was squirming in excitement, but Sera never minded, and now he had her full attention, smiling down at him with the sun bright behind her head.

“I think that’s a great idea,” she said, and he knew that it totally, totally was.

***********

“I’m going trick-or-treating as the chief of a First Nations tribe,” Lupa explained to Gale a few days later, letting Gale sit on the end of his bed and watch as Lupa very carefully painted stripes and patterns around his arms.

“…and you believe that this disguise will encourage fear in the adults, so that you can better extort their candy?” Lupa looked almost angry at this question, but Gale still didn’t really get it, and they wouldn’t be friends if Gale were the kind of person to back down once he’d set his mind to something.

“They don’t give us candy because they’re afraid,” Lupa growled, yanking at the fake leathery vest-thing he’s wearing. “Taking the things you want by harming others…that’s dishonorable. I wouldn’t do that, and I don’t think you would either.” Gale nodded, because, yes—this has been his objection all along. He can’t understand why no one else seemed to have a problem with such an unjust system. But Lupa was explaining. “We’re kids. The adults want to see kids learn to lead lives of courage and honor and they know that to do that, we have to face our fears. The candy is just a reward; it’s their way to support us in that goal.”

And that Gale COULD understand. He wasn’t all that interested in the candy, to be honest, but the reasoning behind it… “I think I kind of get it now,” he said, trying the fit of the idea in his mind. Lupa looked up at him in the mirror and smiled, just a little, as Gale went to help him tie the feathers into his hair.

“Good,” he said, and something in Gale relaxed. “Let’s find something for you, then.”

********

Argilla put the finishing touches on the skull-face makeup for Heat’s Ghost Rider costume—and even she had to admit that the flame-hair wig was pretty badass—just in time for Sera’s timid little knock on their door. “A-are you guys ready, do you think? Only, it’s starting to get dark, and…” Argilla went to open the door and let Heat figure out the spiky gloves on his own.

Sera was absolutely beautiful: she was in her normal cream-colored leggings and boots, but there was a fall of iridescent blue and green strips of fabric streaming from her hips, occasionally looped in impromptu “scales”. The strips clung to her like kelp, wrapping around her top and her arms only to float out behind her, and someone had painted little scales along the sides of her face that shone with glitter. Argilla didn’t even know what to say, looking at her, so she kissed Sera’s cheek and hoped (knew) that Sera would understand her.

Behind her though, Heat was snickering loudly and at first she couldn’t tell why. Serph was standing just behind Sera in the hall, and she could see the way Heat was craning around the edge of the doorway to get a look at him. Argilla didn’t exactly see what he thought was going to be so funny though: Serph was, like Sera, in his normal pants and tall boots under his costume, wrapped in the kelp-ribbons and wearing shell-like spines along the back of his neck and at his elbows. His hands ended in sharp arcs of claw, and the face paint that looked so pretty and ethereal on Sera only made Serph look alien, feral. He looked like the King of the Sea. Behind her, she thought Heat might have stopped breathing.

“That is not even fair,” she thought she heard Heat say, but it was quiet enough that the rest of them could pretend they didn’t hear it, and Argilla started to herd them all out into the front room before things could devolve into a fight.

“’Ey dere bruddah!” Cielo called from the living room floor, where he was pinning up the edges of the sheet at the bottom of Gale’s ghost costume so it wouldn’t trip him. “Lookin’ good! And Sera---aww, you look so pretty!” He looked over at Argilla and pretended to make a face, but she could see he was genuinely happy right now, so she only kicked him a little bit for it. “Let’s go get some candy, ja?”

******

Outside, the air was almost charged, somehow: crisp and billowy like right before a storm, carrying the faint scents of spices and wood-smoke into the darkening streets. Argilla breathed it in, deep into her lungs, and while she breathed out she watched the others fanning out across the sidewalk. Heat was trying to keep Sera on his far side, her drifting ribbons safely away from the little flames of the jack-o-lanterns and the path-candles, even as Serph was on her other side keeping an eye on the traffic. Cielo was already upside down, demonstrating for Gale the way that turning cartwheels made the visor on his improvised helmet move up and down on its own.

A lot of the houses just had a pumpkin or two, or else maybe a few dried-out corn stalks tied by their door so the trick-or-treaters would know they were welcome, but some were more elaborate. The first house they came to—which had been perfectly normal when they’d passed it on the school bus that morning—was strewn with salvaged-styrofoam gravestones and flashing lights, the sound of thunder playing tinnily from a little box half-hidden by fake fog.

“…and this is supposed to be a way of facing our fears?” Gale asked dubiously as Cielo raced right past the decorations to bang gleefully on the door. Serph at least stopped, curiously inspecting a plastic skeleton to see how they’d rigged it to move like that. “I don’t think this is going to work the way they think it is,” Gale mused, standing at Serph’s shoulder and frowning down at the twitching piece of painted plastic. Argilla just shook her head and slipped past him to shout “Trick or Treat!!!” with Cielo at the sexy bee who opened the door.

Several houses went more or less the same way, with Gale getting more and more disgruntled every time, before they ran into Katy and her gang. “You can’t trick-or-treat here, you know,” she informed them with a sweet smile that made Argilla want to grit her teeth.

Serph only raised an eyebrow, so it fell to Sera to cock her head like a curious baby bird and ask “Why?”

Katy pretended to surprise. “Well, because you’re freaks, obviously. I mean—can’t you see that only _normal_ kids are trick-or-treating here? Really, it’s disgusting how that man has you all stuffed into the same house like you’re some kind of _family_.” And Argilla really really didn’t want that to hurt—she had her friends (comrades, a voice in the back of her mind echoed) and Fred and Jinana and that should have been enough, right?—but she’d spent a long time watching the other kids’ parents come by school to pick them up, seen the way they had brothers and sisters and grandparents and Argilla didn’t have anything like that. She wouldn’t trade what she did have for any of that, no way, but still. It made her angry that it hurt, and she found herself having to blink away hot tears.

It wouldn’t have mattered—most of the others couldn’t see her face from where they were—except that the one who _could_ see her was Heat, and so she could hear the growl, lower this year than it was last and kind of getting scary sounding, before she could even start to get herself back under control.

“You shut the hell up, you ugly little bitch,” Heat yelled right back, and yeah, it WAS kind of funny the way the language made Katy’s eyes go wide and horrified, even if Fred was gonna be mad at Heat again. “You think you know anything? We’ve got as much right to be here as anyone, and if you don’t get out of here, I’m gonna tear your face off!” Shoulder to shoulder with Heat, Serph stood in silent agreement, hand flexing threateningly around the spikes strapped to his wrists. Behind them, where Katy probably couldn’t see, Gale had gone up on one foot, reaching for the little folding knife he carried everywhere in his boot. Still, even Katy must have been able to tell that this would be a bad time to push things—two of her gang had already run off, and the rest were starting to slowly back away behind her—and so she settled for stamping her foot.

“You ARE freaks! You’re freaks, and if you try to hang out here you’re gonna regret it! See if you don’t!” Heat took one step towards her, and Katy whirled around in a cloud of sparkly pink taffeta and ran off.

“Whoo! Who spit in her soup, eh?” Cielo shook his head pityingly. “She needs to learn to relax.” He draped both arms over Argilla’s shoulders from behind in a sort of loose half-hug, even if he had to go up on his toes to do it. “I bet she’s just jealous, cause she don’t have friends like us, ja?”

“Ja,” Argilla echoed, half-teasing, and tried out a weak smile for him. Serph nodded at her approvingly, but it was the little weight of Sera’s hand fitting into hers that made the tight feeling behind her ribs finally relax.

“I don’t think any of the houses on this street are going to be scary enough,” Gale finally decided, looking up the street they’re on and back the way they came. “Let’s go to the next one over,” he suggested and even though he was looking in general at all of them, they all knew he was watching for Serph’s ok before he’d do anything. Serph gave a little smile though, without any hesitation at all, and just like that they turned as one to go.

****

They were down two streets, four broken pumpkins, a half-dozen screamingly sugar-high kindergarteners, and a good ten-or-so women in costumes that Gale at least was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to be allowed to see until they were much, much older when Argilla paused halfway between houses and looked up. Very casually, she grabbed a piece of candy out of her bag and held it up to Serph, pointing at his bag like she wanted to trade. As he obligingly rummaged in his bag, she whispered “Someone’s been following us. I’m not sure how long—I’ve seen at least three of them so far, but it sounds like more. Can’t see faces? But they’re big, so probably highschoolers or adults.” Serph nodded and held up a Mars bar in one hand and a packet of M&Ms in the other, handing it over when Argilla smiled brightly and pointed at the one she wanted.

By the time they’d hit up two more houses, it was clear there were at least eight stalkers, and if Argilla didn’t _know_ that there weren’t any more tuners left, she would have said for sure they were monsters—they sort of slither-squished when they moved, some of them, or else click-clicked with a dry, grating sound, first on one side of them and then on the other. They’d hit the part of town where there were more shops than houses, dark and shut up against holiday pranks, and it was getting late enough even in the places where people lived that there were fewer and fewer other kids around. Argilla cursed to herself, a little, for not noticing sooner—they’d let themselves be neatly maneuvered into territory where they’d have to actually cross where their attackers waited for them to get back towards home and people. And to make matters worse, there was real fog starting to coil around the bushes and streetlights, the kind of heavy New Portland fog off of the coast that blanketed everything until you could hardly see inches in front of you.

“Dis…really isn’t looking good, is it?” Cielo murmured next to her, and again, all Argilla could think was ‘dammit’, because there were _shapes_ there, weren’t there? The leader walked like a man, at first, but was obscured for a moment by thicker fog, and when they could see him again he lumbered, half bent over like an animal. He certainly didn’t look human: two jagged holes peered out at them from the fog where the thing’s eyes should be, and the tattered rags the thing wore did nothing to hide the peeling strips of flesh hanging like moss from its arms and legs. The worst, though, were the teeth—sharp as little knives and glistening red with blood. All around it, the half-seen shapes of dead things stumbled and lurched towards them, closing in on them from every side.

From this close, Argilla could see the way that Sera was shaking, but her voice was steady when she locked eyes with Serph and said, “We can’t go around them. We’re going to have to fight.” Gale’s boot-knife was already in his hand, hidden behind the white fall of his costume, and Heat’s costume-chain-whip was actual real chain they’d had lying around—sort of rusted, but better than nothing. Argilla didn’t know how sturdy Serph’s claw-thing was, but the rest of them didn’t have anything but their hands and their bodies, and Argilla was getting more and more convinced that these really were Tuners. She took a deep breath, held it, and then breathed out her terror.

“You ssssshould have gone home when you were warned,” the leader hissed at them, its voice like someone half-drowned and coughing up muck, and around him the other things clicked their jaws together in some kind of hideous parody of laughter. “But now I’ll have an eassssssy dinner.” It coughed slime and grinned. “And maybe, if you’re delicious enough, I’ll try out some of your little friends, too!”

Argilla got a flash of Jinana’s face from earlier, the little painted tear that seemed to fit her so well, and almost couldn’t speak for anger. Beside her she could see Gale’s lip curling too, his hand tight around the knife, but it was Cielo who actually spoke.

“Dat’s enough right dere, you. We’re not gwon let you hurt us, or our friends either! So just go on home!” The things chittered their weird laughter back at him, though, and all of the sudden they were all moving, their uncoordinated shuffle from before belied by the way they were all racing towards them now.

“Fuck,” Heat said feelingly, and whipped the little fishing-weight at the end of his chain into the forehead of one bone-thing, knocking it out clean, and Argilla kind of wanted to take a minute to be impressed with that but she couldn’t because there was another just in front of her, trying to pick her up and tearing at her dress with long sharp claws. Argilla shrieked and froze, letting it pick her up just long enough for it to bring her in range, and then twisted on herself until she faced it, blindly sinking teeth into it until she found soft flesh, and tore. The warm splash of blood over her face made her want to retch, but she kept biting down until it let her fall, crumpling to the ground in front of her. Maybe they reverted to being people when they died—human tuners did that, sometimes, didn’t they? She didn’t know.

While she’d been fighting, the others had taken down three more somehow and Cielo was digging his thumbs deep behind the eyes of the sixth, pushing and pushing even as the thing screamed. It certainly didn’t sound human. Argilla didn’t know what had happened to the seventh, but in the center of them all she could see Serph and Sera standing firm in front of the leader. “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?” it kept screaming, voice gone high and thin in the strangest way. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU—“ But Serph’s claw must have been made out of something sturdy after all, because the sound cut off with a wet gurgle as Serph shoved it through the thing’s chest. It took the thing a long time to die, blowing wet little bubbles of blood as it tried to breathe, but eventually it was still and Argilla could look around.

Sera had a long cut going down her face from forehead to cheek, though it probably wasn’t as bad as it looked the way head cuts bleed. Cielo was red to the wrists, curled up next to his tuner on the ground where he’d fallen when the thing died; it didn’t look like he could stand, and he was breathing thin and fast. Heat looked mostly ok, but Serph had dropped his claw and was cradling his wrist close to his chest, and Argilla couldn’t tell just by looking how bad it was hurt. Gale’s knife was broken, and his costume was in shreds on the ground, looking like he’d used the fabric to block another knife-thrust. He had a couple of minor cuts on his arms, but nothing that looked too serious. Argilla let herself breathe.

“So, what do we do now?” Cielo asked, eyes fixed on Serph like only that was holding off his panic. “We have to do something—we killed them!” Gale put a hand on his shoulder and Argilla was grateful; if Cielo didn’t start breathing more normally he’d probably pass out. “We can’t just leave them here!”

“No,” Serph said quietly. “No, we can’t—we killed them. We have to show them at least that much respect.”

For a long moment, none of them moved. And then Heat made a sound like a sob that wanted to be a growl and turned back to the first one he’d killed. “Fine,” he snarled, and leaned over it, tearing off a chunk of flesh with his teeth.

Bile rose in Argilla’s throat, and she stammered, “You can’t… that’s…”

“We KILLED them,” Heat snarled at her, and flecks of dark blood flew off of his face. “We HAVE to.”

Behind him, Serph had sat himself on the ground, using a knife Argilla didn’t recognize to cut strips of meat off of the leader one-handed while Sera held it still for him, tears mixing with the blood on her face. Gale had wrapped the end of his broken-off blade in extra fabric from his costume and was using it on another of the bodies, awkwardly sawing pieces off and handing them over to Cielo. “I can’t—“ she felt the sob building in her throat as she backed away from them unsteadily.

“You WILL,” Heat told her, voice breaking as he blocked her escape. He held up a bitten-off chunk of meat, shoving it towards her face when she wouldn’t take it. “We’re not having this argument again; I’m not gonna watch you go all weak and wilty again,” and Argilla wanted to argue with him because what the hell? It’s not like the situation had exactly _come up before_ , but the moment she opened her mouth he shoved the meat into it.

The chunk was a mess of chewy, congealing, salty blood and fiber, and Argilla kept having to fight herself back from spitting it out or throwing up. It was like it expanded in her mouth and no matter how much she chewed she couldn’t bring herself to just swallow it and she couldn’t breathe and—Serph was looking up at her. For the longest time, he didn’t say anything, just watched her silently with the saddest, most determined eyes she’d ever seen. “Eat,” Heat told her, and just like that she could. She choked down the chunk of meat in her mouth and bent her head to tear off the next herself, and all of it was flavored with her tears.

******

They hadn’t made much progress by the time the police arrived; bodies have a lot of meat on them, and these bodies were bigger than they were to begin with, nevermind how many there were. Still, they’d done their awkward best, settling eventually into a grim kind of rhythm: rip, chew, cry, swallow. It was almost a relief to have it be interrupted by the wailing of police sirens, though they were all disoriented enough by then that they had some trouble tracking what was going on. Argilla knew a lot of people were yelling, anyway, and she kind of thought she’d seen Katy having hysterics at a police officer a few yards away. She’d also thought she’d seen one of the bone-things, this time wearing a normal, human head on top of its decaying body, but dismissed it as just shock.

Eventually, though, Fred showed up, and that meant that things would be ok. Even Serph would let himself stand down if Fred were there, and let him gently guide them away from the mangled corpses, Sera helping Cielo walk because none of them trusted anyone else to be that close yet.

“What happened?” she could hear Fred asking Gale somewhat helplessly as he stared in blank horror at what they’d done. Fred wasn’t looking at Gale, but Argilla was and she could see the grim, sorrowful satisfaction in Gale’s tight jaw.

“We faced our fears,” he explained, eyes also fixed on the bodies. “We faced our fears, and we were the ones to survive. And then we did the honorable thing.”


End file.
